Help I'm going electronic!

[Sans Bateau]

Help I\'m going electronic!

Whilst I will continue putting plots onto a chart, I want to integrate my nav equipment. The radar will be at the helm together with the PDA which I will use for pilotage. This is what I have:

Raymarine SL72plus
Garmin 152 gps
Raymarine 54e DSC radio
ICS Navtex 4
Raymarine ***100 plotter (like Yeoman)
PDA running Maptech charts.

Some people just love doing all these conectivity jobs, I can do the nuts and bolts bit, however I need some help with the former. Do I go and spend a fortune with a 'specialist' or can anyone help me?

 

[simonfraser]

Re: Help I\'m going electronic!

i guess you need to spend the money !

 

[steverow]

Re: Help I\'m going electronic!

OK, The SL72 plus will take an NMEA output from the GPS and will display Nav info on its windows. You can also do a "sneaky" and connect any Raymarine gear you have via seatalk to the radar, and this will bridge the NMEA over to the seatalk bus, provided you have that enabled in the SL72 system set up menu.
If you have an autopilot then you can run it's info from there and conversely the A/P will display WP info, status, Time and distance to wheel over point, XTE, BWP etc on the radar info windows.
I assume you already have your DSC radio connected to your GPS via NMEA.
Most GPS's will happily run at least four listeners on their NMEA out.
My Garmin 235 is running six.
The raymarine plotter, although I dont have first hand info of it, will probably run both NMEA and Seatalk, and it is up to you how you connect it.

The pitfalls:
Some older gear requires NMEA 0183 version 1.5, currently most stuff is happy with version 2.0.
The differences are that you lose a decimal place on the Lat long, but some gear..notably C-map ECS and some Hummimgbird gear refuse to give you a position if feeding version 2.0 into something meant for1.5.
When using Raymarine gear the seatalk bus usually takes priority, so for instance, if feeding NMEA course info and a fluxgate into an autopilot, the fluxgate on seatalk assumes priority....at least it does on my setup, but that can largely be eliminated by setting the fluxgate to give a true reading and the GPS to the same.

I dunno what PDA you have. If it has an RS232(9pin)din connector or converter on it you are fine, but otherwise you will probably need a USB to serial converter for it to take the NMEA...but maybe you've already got NMEA running into the PDA plotter??

If you need any more info on anything, particularly on interfacing the SL72+ (which I have) then PM me.

You should be able to do the job yourself given plenty of forethought and planning, some good connector boxes etc.

Steve.

 

[Sans Bateau]

Re: Help I\'m going electronic!

Steve

Thank you, glad to see I don't need to spend loads of money!

I think that the initial thought of the installation is rather daunting, I will take one step at a time, as you say "lots of planning". I will PM you with my progress.

Stephen

 

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